Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Penndel Mental Health Center has a legal duty to safeguard our clients’ protected health information. PMHC protects the privacy of the health information that we maintain that identifies our clients, whether it deals with the provision of health care or the payment for health care.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is a set of federal laws designed to safeguard our clients’ health information. These privacy laws serve several purposes: they establish how health information can be used by a health care provider; they also identify instances when a client’s permission is required to disclose health information to other persons and they identify a client’s rights and a provider’s rights, when it comes to the handling of health information.

The HIPAA privacy laws allow clients to ask PMHC to restrict how their health information is used in certain circumstances. The staff at PMHC works with our clients to determine how their health information is to be used, and we make them aware that these privacy laws do not require us to agree to all requests in all situations.

The HIPAA privacy laws allow PMHC to seek a client’s written consent in order to use and disclose his/her health information in order to: 1) provide treatment, 2) seek payment for services, and 3) for certain day-to-day operations of our organization. Any client who has a question about how PMHC may use or disclose her/her health information, or about the records that we must maintain, are encouraged to contact the Director of the program where he/she receives treatment/services.